The Corner of Bitter and Sweet (23 page)

As for me, I spent my time trying not to appear painfully aware of where Matt was at any given second. I kept shifting my body in such a way so that he was always in my peripheral vision, but never so that I’d be face-to-face and have to talk to him. Although he didn’t seem to have an issue with it, I felt self-conscious about the fact that he was on his feet bringing out course after course of Italian food while I was sitting at a table with people who were complaining about how difficult it was to fly on a regular plane once you had flown on the Paramount private jet (Barry and Dina). Even back in the day when you couldn’t pick up a magazine with a (non-mug-shot) photo of Mom on the cover, I had never felt comfortable listening to rich white people bitch about rich white people problems.

After dessert—tiramisu and profiteroles, which, in true Hollywood fashion, everyone picked at except for Billy and me—we cleaned our plates—people started to leave. As Mom and Billy talked I kept looking toward the door, half of me hoping that Matt would come out before we left. The other half prayed he wouldn’t, because the idea of his saying something like “Well, nice seeing you again” and nothing else felt worse than leaving without saying good-bye. Finally, after the dishes were gone from the table and everyone else had trickled out so only me, Mom, and Billy were left, Matt came rushing out, having exchanged his cater-waiter preppiness for a faded NYU T-shirt and the same paint-flecked khaki shorts from the other day.

“You’re still here,” he said.

It was probably me just projecting my own feelings, but I could have sworn he sounded relieved. “Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.

“I don’t know what you’re doing now . . . I mean, I know it’s a little late . . . although being from L.A., you probably don’t even go out until around now,” he said. “Even though my dad says that people in L.A. go out early because they like to get home early so they can get to bed and get up and do yoga at six o’clock in the morning—”

He was talking a lot, and fast. Faster than he had at the coffee shop. Was he talking a lot because he was nervous?

“Oh, I love early-morning yoga classes!” Mom said.

“Me, too,” Billy said. “I took this sunrise class on the beach once when I was in Hawaii? I think it was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life.”

“Omigod, I’ll
bet
,” Mom gasped. “Where do you like to go when you’re there? The Big Island or—”

How had my conversation with Matt suddenly become one about how Mom and Billy had yet another thing in common?

“Anyways, there’s this music-reading-performance thing at the Basilica—the arts center place down near the train station?—that a friend of mine is doing, and I thought you might want to check it out,” Matt blurted out.

I could feel my stomach start to do warm-ups. This guy—this really cute guy—was kind-of-sort-of asking me out.

“You know, as a way for you to meet some people around here,” he added.

The warm-ups stopped. He was just being nice. Still, date or no date, here was my own opportunity to do things differently. To say yes and be social instead of hanging out at home watching over my mother. “Oh. Thanks. That’s really nice of you,” I said, “but—”

“What a generous invitation!” Mom exclaimed. She turned to Billy. “Don’t you find the friendliness of country people just so
refreshing
?”

I sighed. If Matt had taken back his offer based on that alone, I wouldn’t have blamed him. Luckily, when I glanced up at him, he looked amused rather than offended. “I have to drive my mom home,” I went on. “She’s not so great driving in the dark.”

“Who are we kidding,” Mom snorted. “I’m not even that great stone cold sober in the daylight.”

That was true.

“I could drive her home,” Billy offered hopefully. “Clermont’s just over from Germantown.” I hadn’t seen it, but over dinner Billy had been talking about the converted barn with thirty-foot ceilings that the producers had rented for him for the shoot. It sounded amazing.

The three of them waited for my response. What was I waiting for? This was what I wanted, right? What I had used my wish on at the fountain at the Grove that day, after realizing that the one about Ben and Mom had officially passed its expiration date—to have a life? Just then I heard Walter’s voice in my head telling me—actually, ordering me—to “act as if.” I could act as if hanging out with cute boys with gaps between their teeth was something I did on a regular basis. I could act as if I wasn’t nervous that I’d say or do something stupid. I could act as if I wasn’t worried what would happen if my mother invited a hot guy sixteen years younger than her into our house after he drove her home.

I could act as if it was okay that, for a few hours, I stopped trying to control not just my world but everyone else’s around me.

“Cool. That sounds fun,” I said.

It’s one thing to be cooped up in your bedroom on a Saturday night, scribbling in your journal about how you are so over the fact that you’re missing yet another party because you need to babysit your mother, so pissed that the pen breaks and ink gets all over your hand. But it’s a whole other thing to be given your freedom. Because as much as you’ve wished for freedom, once you have it, you don’t feel exhilarated. You want to hide in the bathroom of the Basilica.

“I don’t know what the men’s room is like,” I said to Matt as I walked out of the ladies’ room after realizing that if I stayed in there any longer he was going to think I had serious digestive issues. “But it’s really cool in there.” The whole place had a vintage industrial look.

“It used to be a glue factory. Now they use it for art shows and music stuff,” he explained.

We walked over to the edge of the main room where a tatted-up bald guy wearing an I’M PART OF THE ZERO PERCENT AND PROUD OF IT T-shirt was doing a spoken-word thing about the evil of the ego and how the world would be a much better place if meditation was made mandatory by law.

“And to give guys like that a chance to try to impress girls by making them think they’re all deep so they might get lucky and hook up,” he said.

I laughed. “I guess hipsters are everywhere.”

But Matt wasn’t a hipster. He was hip in that he wasn’t hip. In fact, during the walk down Warren Street to the Basilica, I discovered that he had this way of nervously rambling on, which reminded me a little of the actor Jesse Eisenberg. Who I just happened to find really cute. I didn’t really mind the rambling. It took me off the hook from having to talk too much.

“I’m assuming you’ve been to Swallow?” he asked.

I nodded. Swallow was a coffee place up on Warren that was swarming with hipsters. “Yeah, I guess you can’t work there unless you have a very bushy beard.”

He laughed. “Yes. And chunky black-rimmed eyeglasses.”

“And a passion for foreign magazines,” I said.

“Or—even better—a dog-eared copy of something by Freud or Kafka, which you keep on the counter at all times and then, when people come to place their order, you tear yourself away from it but not before making sure they see the cover first.”

“And listen to jazz,” I said. “Or world music. And when asked where the band is from, you don’t say Nicaragua. You say
Nicarrrrragua
with a rolled
r
.”

He nodded. “Right. And even better if it’s playing on an actual record player instead of a CD or iPod,” he yelled over the feedback of the electric guitars that the bald guy had added to his performance.

This was fun. So fun that as we were going back and forth, I eventually stopped trying to imagine what Mom and Billy were doing at that moment and whether she had invited him in. And whether she remembered what the AA people said about how it wasn’t a good idea to get into a relationship your first year sober. And whether Skye was texting Billy so that he remembered that he had a girlfriend.

“So I guess I should introduce you to some people,” Matt yelled as we moved to the side of the room.

“Okay,” I said, disappointed we couldn’t keep bantering.

“But the thing is, I’d really rather just get out of here so I can save whatever’s left of my hearing and walk over to the river and just talk more because, honestly, most of the people here are asshole poseurs who, even though I don’t know you well, I don’t think you’d like,” he said. “Plus, even though I sort of know them, I don’t
know
them know them, and therefore, when I introduced you, they’d be thinking ‘Do I even know this guy?’ and then it would be this whole awkward thing.”

“Okay,” I laughed.

“Okay to which part? Okay to leaving and going for a walk, or okay to wanting me to introduce you and have it be awkward?”

I giggled. When was the last time I had giggled? “The walk option.”

He smiled. “Excellent.”

I tried to will my hand not to get clammy after he grabbed it in order to lead me through the maze of bushy beards (guys) and nose rings (girls mostly, but also some guys) in order to get out. Or to think about how his hand was an interesting mix of rough and soft and what it might feel like if he happened to, I don’t know, touch my face with it.

I was disappointed when he let go of my hand once we got outside, and pretended to pay attention as he told me the history of Hudson and how it used to be the red-light district for the politicians in Albany, which was forty-five minutes away. But really what I was doing was thinking about how good it felt to be doing something so . . .
normal teenager
–like. That is, hanging out with a boy and wondering if he was going to try to kiss me at the end of the night.

As we sat on a bench under the full moon, I tried to act nonchalant, as if this were something I did on a regular basis instead of never. Just like I tried to act as if guys always wiped off benches for me before I sat down the way he did. It reminded me of the scene in this old movie
Say Anything
where John Cusack stopped a barefoot Ione Skye from stepping on glass as they walked home after a party. Mom and I had decided that scene was number six on our “Top Ten Romantic Scenes in Hollywood History.”

He turned to me. “So there’s something I should tell you.”

Really? He couldn’t have waited until when he dropped me off to bring up the fact that while he thought I was really cool, the truth was he had a girlfriend and he wanted to get that out in the open because it was totally obvious from my face that I found the way he rambled on nervously was cute instead of dorky?

Before he could go on, my phone rang. I took it out of my bag and looked at it. Mom. “I’m sorry. I just need—”

“No worries,” he replied, sounding a bit relieved that he had a short reprieve before he had to come clean about the girlfriend.

“Is everything okay?” I asked when I answered, my standard greeting to my mother.

“Hi, honey. Are you having fun?” she asked.

“I am. You got home okay?”

“Yup. Did you happen to see the moon by any chance? Is it not totally gorgeous?”

Seriously? “Yup. So what’s going on?”

“You know, I totally forgot to write down my new- moon affirmations,” she went on. “But if I remember correctly, you have about twelve hours afterward as well, so I might be able to—”

“Sooo . . . did you need something?” I asked impatiently.

“Yes, I wanted to know where you put that tea we bought yesterday. The pear one. We’re going to try it.”

“Who’s we?”

“Billy and me.”

“He came in?”

“Yes. For tea.”

“How long is he staying?”

“He’s staying for as long as it takes for us to drink a cup of tea, Annabelle,” she said in her I’m-the-mother tone.

“In the cabinet to the right of the stove.”

“Thank you.”

“What time do you want me home by?” I asked before she clicked off.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what’s my curfew? I forgot to ask before.”

“Curfew? I don’t know. Billy, what do you think a good curfew time is for someone Annabelle’s age?” I heard him mumble something in the background. “He says eleven thirty, but that’s in ten minutes, so that’s not going to work. Plus, that sounds a little strict to me. Why don’t we say, I don’t know, one?”

“How about twelve thirty?”

“Okay. That sounds good. But I don’t want you to rush if you’re having fun,” she replied. “You know I trust you.”

I sighed. I’m sure that tomorrow she’d present me with a box of condoms. “Yeah, I know. Bye,” I said as I clicked off and turned off the ringer. I turned back to Matt. “Sorry about that. So what was it you wanted to tell me?” I figured it was better just to get it over with so he could take me home and I could go to my room and make a list of all the reasons why Matt’s girlfriend was different (read: better) than me anyway.

“Okay, so I Googled you,” he confessed. “After that morning at The Cascades.”

I waited for the rest of it—the part about the girlfriend. But he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me anxiously. “That’s it? That’s what you wanted to tell me?” I finally asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Is it weird that I did? That I told you, I mean?”

I shrugged. Maybe there was no girlfriend. “Why is it weird? You’re just being honest about what everyone does but doesn’t admit.” And because I hadn’t known his last name, when I tried Googling him, it hadn’t netted me anything of use other than some Twitter accounts that didn’t seem to be his.

“Anyway, I read about what happened . . . you know, with the DUI, and the money . . .”

Genius. As much as my mother tried to force me to go have a life, she ended up coming with me no matter what. “Yeah, well . . .” I said, trailing off. Because, really, what was there to say about it?

“Sounds like it’s been a rough couple of months.”

I guess there was that to say about it.

“But it seems like things are better now,” he said. “And she seems happy with Billy Barrett.”

“Wait . . . what? With? Oh, they’re not
together
together,” I corrected. “They’re just doing the movie together.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’ what?”

He shrugged. “I just . . .” He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Why? Did it
look
like they were together?”